Sharing common goals to improve low-income dwellers’ rental experiences, ZeShan Foundation joined hands with ComHome Social Housing Platform (“ComHome”) in 2022, to pilot the development of a more socially responsible real estate agency model serving underprivileged families in Hong Kong.
The dire living conditions in many subdivided units (“SDU”) have been under media spotlight for years. However, frequent house moving, which is equally stressful for SDU residents yet being often discussed.
Many refugees arriving in Hong Kong have fled from their homes as a result of war, violence or persecution. There are approximately 13,000 asylum seekers in Hong Kong, often waiting for as long as 15-20 years for the results of their appeals.
I came to study in Hong Kong as an exchange student in 2021, and could not do much during my first academic year because of the COVID-19 restrictions. I thus wanted to start a social project to gain more experience, meet people, and help the community. I was also getting more familiar with the city and wanted to spend my second year doing something new! When I learnt about the Law for Change Student Competition 2022, I considered it the perfect opportunity to seize!
The Competition was one of the highlights of my Hong Kong experience. Indeed, it taught me a lot, yet was also a lot of fun! I met amazing people from different backgrounds that all had something in common: the desire and passion to help the community. They all motivated me to work hard with my teammates to start an ambitious project from scratch.
Our idea was to create a platform connecting eco-conscious consumers with eco-friendly Food & Beverage businesses. This would allow consumers to “vote with their dollars” by easily finding small Food & Beverage businesses near them that act for the planet. Consequently, it would become a strong incentive for local F&B businesses to adopt greener measures to attract those customers.
Later, we convinced the judges of the competition and obtained a grant to prototype our project. With our ambitious project goal, we encountered some operational difficulties, including recruiting project partners. We spent a lot of time and efforts to try to overcome them, but also lost precious time. It was a competition after all, and our progress was slower compared to other teams. Only three teams could obtain the final grant.
Nevertheless, I am immensely proud of what our team achieved and learnt during this period! We learnt so much on, inter alia, environmental laws in Hong Kong, running a project from A to Z, business operations in the city… Moreover, we now understand the areas that we could have improved from time management, team collaboration to idea implementation, this being very useful for our future endeavours. I would thus like to thank everyone that supported us along the way, and allowed us to thrive.
Last but not the least, congratulations to the winning teams, and I wish them all the best. (I am sure they will do great!)
Justin Horchler (Exchange Student with Hong Kong Baptist University)
Member of Shortlisted Team, Law for Change Student Competition 2022
Justin and his teammates pitching their project
Justin and his teammates pitching their project
Justin Horchler (Exchange Student with Hong Kong Baptist University)
Member of Shortlisted Team, Law for Change Student Competition 2022
I came to study in Hong Kong as an exchange student in 2021, and could not do much during my first academic year because of the COVID-19 restrictions. I thus wanted to start a social project to gain more experience, meet people, and help the community. I was also getting more familiar with the city and wanted to spend my second year doing something new! When I learnt about the Law for Change Student Competition 2022, I considered it the perfect opportunity to seize!
The Competition was one of the highlights of my Hong Kong experience. Indeed, it taught me a lot, yet was also a lot of fun! I met amazing people from different backgrounds that all had something in common: the desire and passion to help the community. They all motivated me to work hard with my teammates to start an ambitious project from scratch.
Our idea was to create a platform connecting eco-conscious consumers with eco-friendly Food & Beverage businesses. This would allow consumers to “vote with their dollars” by easily finding small Food & Beverage businesses near them that act for the planet. Consequently, it would become a strong incentive for local F&B businesses to adopt greener measures to attract those customers.
Later, we convinced the judges of the competition and obtained a grant to prototype our project. With our ambitious project goal, we encountered some operational difficulties, including recruiting project partners. We spent a lot of time and efforts to try to overcome them, but also lost precious time. It was a competition after all, and our progress was slower compared to other teams. Only three teams could obtain the final grant.
Nevertheless, I am immensely proud of what our team achieved and learnt during this period! We learnt so much on, inter alia, environmental laws in Hong Kong, running a project from A to Z, business operations in the city… Moreover, we now understand the areas that we could have improved from time management, team collaboration to idea implementation, this being very useful for our future endeavours. I would thus like to thank everyone that supported us along the way, and allowed us to thrive.
Last but not the least, congratulations to the winning teams, and I wish them all the best. (I am sure they will do great!)
Justin Horchler (Exchange Student with Hong Kong Baptist University)
Member of Shortlisted Team, Law for Change Student Competition 2022
Against the backdrop of increased longevity, we have witnessed an influx of expertise and ideas across sectors to reimagine various fronts of life after adulthood, from daily living, to participation in learning, work and social activities. However, when it comes to living space where elders spend most of their time in, we might find it less often to talk about and act on.
Sharing the vision for bridging gaps in senior housing development, ZeShan Foundation teamed up with Ho Cheung Shuk Yuen Charitable Foundation in early 2023 to provide a 2-year capacity building grant for incubating Happy Ageing Lab Foundation as the new think-and-do tank to build a more age-friendly living environment.
Happy Ageing Lab Foundation will keep pushing forward on the endeavours in revamping the design and management of local built environment for healthy ageing, through (i) advancing its capacity in knowledge mobilisation (ii) connecting and supporting more like-minded housing providers & professionals, NGOs, and of course residents to pilot innovative age-friendly housing design around Hong Kong.
ZeShan looks forward to seeing where this journey will lead us to. May there be more inclusive housing design ideas in bloom? Would it be possible to enrich existing narratives around active ageing? Let’s stay tuned.
Alexa Li
Assistant Program Manager
ZeShan Foundation
Against the backdrop of increased longevity, we have witnessed an influx of expertise and ideas across sectors to reimagine various fronts of life after adulthood, from daily living, to participation in learning, work and social activities. However, when it comes to living space where elders spend most of their time in, we might find it less often to talk about and act on.
Sharing the vision for bridging gaps in senior housing development, ZeShan Foundation teamed up with Ho Cheung Shuk Yuen Charitable Foundation in early 2023 to provide a 2-year capacity building grant for incubating Happy Ageing Lab Foundation as the new think-and-do tank to build a more age-friendly living environment.
Happy Ageing Lab Foundation will keep pushing forward on the endeavours in revamping the design and management of local built environment for healthy ageing, through (i) advancing its capacity in knowledge mobilisation (ii) connecting and supporting more like-minded housing providers & professionals, NGOs, and of course residents to pilot innovative age-friendly housing design around Hong Kong.
ZeShan looks forward to seeing where this journey will lead us to. May there be more inclusive housing design ideas in bloom? Would it be possible to enrich existing narratives around active ageing? Let’s stay tuned.
Alexa Li
Assistant Program Manager
ZeShan Foundation
Tsz Kwan Lai
Assistant Operations Manager
ZeShan Foundation
Moreover, this project is also testing a community-based referral system for professional treatment and a co-payment system referencing government subsidy scale like Health Care Voucher and Community Care Service Voucher, etc. Evidence-based evaluation would also be conducted in order to assess the project outcomes, including connectivity between social resources and the actual needs for these underserved communities in remote areas.
As an effort to expand its partnership, SKDCC has also received free health coaching for its nurse staff and free nursing support from the project team of HomeAge of the City University of Hong Kong.
Tsz Kwan Lai
Assistant Operations Manager
ZeShan Foundation
Website:
Media (Chinese Only):
外展護士：
不單照顧鄉郊長者的醫療需要 關心她們心靈及社福需要 @ 卓越實踐在社福2021
Link (Youtube 平台)
《凝聚香港》-西貢鄉郊流動醫療康健計劃 -重溫（7’39‘’開始）
Link (香港電台 Podcast)
《凝聚香港》-西貢鄉郊流動醫療康健計劃 -重溫（7’39‘’開始）
Link (香港電台 Podcast)
「校園新氣象」計劃 香港首個校本空氣質素監測網絡成立 協助校園改善空氣質素 – 明校網 – 全港幼稚園、小學、中學及國際學校資訊平台
Link (Mingpao News)
Health inequity in rural areas is sometimes neglected in our city. In Sai Kung alone, there are more than 158,800 senior citizens, accounting for 32% of the district population. It is estimated that at least 10,000 of them are still living dispersedly and remotely among 110 rural villages, very far away from the closest major government-funded healthcare facilities in the urban town of Tseung Kwan O.
In addition, insufficient internet coverage remains as one of the greatest hurdles for implementing telehealth services there, as concluded in our supported pilot project by Sai Kung District Community Centre (SKDCC). Despite numerous barriers, as a community-based NGO, SKDCC continues its pursuit to address the service gaps at the first contact point of primary healthcare system and to explore more effective solutions for ageing-in-place in rural areas.
Since July 2022, ZeShan Foundation, together with Kerry Group, has therefore been co-funding SKDCC’s another 3-year pilot project “Mobile Primary Healthcare in Rural Sai Kung for Elderly”. The team has been reaching out to elderly villagers to strengthen their self-efficacy, through combining the use of smart devices for monitoring, health coaching, mobilisation of community health ambassadors and case management, with a more holistic lens of maintaining a better quality of life in terms of healthcare and social connections. These approaches align with ZeShan’s three guiding principles, namely ‘empowerment’ (by increasing the capacity of older persons to take charge of their own health, and of communities to take care of each), “engagement & collaboration” (by facilitating partnerships among social workers, pharmacies, researchers and community members, including the development of protocols and mechanism of collaboration), and “catalyzing innovations and flexibility” (by providing capital to an NGO such as SKDCC to test new collaborations and engage policy-making stakeholders).
Health inequity in rural areas is sometimes neglected in our city. In Sai Kung alone, there are more than 158,800 senior citizens, accounting for 32% of the district population. It is estimated that at least 10,000 of them are still living dispersedly and remotely among 110 rural villages, very far away from the closest major government-funded healthcare facilities in the urban town of Tseung Kwan O.
In addition, insufficient internet coverage remains as one of the greatest hurdles for implementing telehealth services there, as concluded in our supported pilot project by Sai Kung District Community Centre (SKDCC). Despite numerous barriers, as a community-based NGO, SKDCC continues its pursuit to address the service gaps at the first contact point of primary healthcare system and to explore more effective solutions for ageing-in-place in rural areas.
Since July 2022, ZeShan Foundation, together with Kerry Group, has therefore been co-funding SKDCC’s another 3-year pilot project “Mobile Primary Healthcare in Rural Sai Kung for Elderly”. The team has been reaching out to elderly villagers to strengthen their self-efficacy, through combining the use of smart devices for monitoring, health coaching, mobilisation of community health ambassadors and case management, with a more holistic lens of maintaining a better quality of life in terms of healthcare and social connections. These approaches align with ZeShan’s three guiding principles, namely ‘empowerment’ (by increasing the capacity of older persons to take charge of their own health, and of communities to take care of each), “engagement & collaboration” (by facilitating partnerships among social workers, pharmacies, researchers and community members, including the development of protocols and mechanism of collaboration), and “catalyzing innovations and flexibility” (by providing capital to an NGO such as SKDCC to test new collaborations and engage policy-making stakeholders).
Moreover, this project is also testing a community-based referral system for professional treatment and a co-payment system referencing government subsidy scale like Health Care Voucher and Community Care Service Voucher, etc. Evidence-based evaluation would also be conducted in order to assess the project outcomes, including connectivity between social resources and the actual needs for these underserved communities in remote areas.
As an effort to expand its partnership, SKDCC has also received free health coaching for its nurse staff and free nursing support from the project team of HomeAge of the City University of Hong Kong.
Tsz Kwan Lai
Assistant Operations Manager
ZeShan Foundation
Moreover, this project is also testing a community-based referral system for professional treatment and a co-payment system referencing government subsidy scale like Health Care Voucher and Community Care Service Voucher, etc. Evidence-based evaluation would also be conducted in order to assess the project outcomes, including connectivity between social resources and the actual needs for these underserved communities in remote areas.
As an effort to expand its partnership, SKDCC has also received free health coaching for its nurse staff and free nursing support from the project team of HomeAge of the City University of Hong Kong.
Tsz Kwan Lai
Assistant Operations Manager
ZeShan Foundation
Website:
Media (Chinese Only):
外展護士：
不單照顧鄉郊長者的醫療需要 關心她們心靈及社福需要 @ 卓越實踐在社福2021
Link (Youtube 平台)
《凝聚香港》-西貢鄉郊流動醫療康健計劃 -重溫（7’39‘’開始）
Link (香港電台 Podcast)
《凝聚香港》-西貢鄉郊流動醫療康健計劃 -重溫（7’39‘’開始）
Link (香港電台 Podcast)
「校園新氣象」計劃 香港首個校本空氣質素監測網絡成立 協助校園改善空氣質素 – 明校網 – 全港幼稚園、小學、中學及國際學校資訊平台
Link (Mingpao News)
Law for Change Incubation programmes have blossomed in recent years, supporting myriads of passionate young people to generate social impact innovations. It is encouraging to see growing interests towards certain social topics but some topics seem to remain remote to young change-makers. “Access to legal support” is one of the examples.
Age-related declines in capabilities may compromise older people’s ability to respond to health and safety hazards in home environment, causing increased risk of home injuries and threatening ageing-in-place. Recognising the growing demand for more personalised and preventive home support, ZeShan Foundation rolled out a new partnership with Habitat for Humanity Hong Kong
Environmental protection has been higher on public agenda in Hong Kong. It is exciting to see more information exchanges and community campaigns on pressing issues like greenhouse gases, wastes and habitat degradation. But what about air pollution?
Compared to the extreme hot days, odor nuisances or loss of endangered species, smog might seem to be a less worrying phenomenon. Air pollution, however, can be harming our health at different stages slowly yet severely. Air pollution deserves our attention.
Sharing the same mission that we need more conversations and actions on air pollution, ZeShan Foundation has collaborated with Clean Air Networks (“CAN”) in 2022 to carry out a 2-year school-based project on air monitoring and education. The pilot will support 8 primary and secondary schools in Sham Shui Po and Tuen Mun to gather real-time data on air quality via monitor installation. This is one of our first attempts to develop more community-led initiatives to address our environmental issues. With the available data and technical support from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the participating school management, teaching staff and students will be guided by CAN to develop and test out their adaptation measures to address air pollution in schools.
Sowing the seeds of raising awareness and knowledge, ZeShan hopes to see more behavioral changes around air pollution on a school level, and ultimately a cleaner and healthier learning environment for nurturing young minds.
Alexa Li
Assistant Program Manager
ZeShan Foundation
Website: CAN
Media (Chinese Only):
香港首個校本空氣質素監測網絡成立 為小學提供儀器監察校園空氣
(HK01 News)
「校園新氣象」計劃 香港首個校本空氣質素監測網絡成立 協助校園改善空氣質素 – 明校網 – 全港幼稚園、小學、中學及國際學校資訊平台
(Mingpao News)
